Semantic Organizers: Implications for Reading and
Writing

Description of article

CONTEXT: This article discusses the benefits and applications of the semantic
organizer approach, semantic organizers (also called maps), and current research
supporting their use in the reading and writing process for students who have difficulty
in organizing, evaluating, and remembering information.

According to the authors, the benefits of using semantic organizers with students with
disabilities in reading and writing, as indicated in the article are as follows:

Bridging the gap between organizing information and the process of reading and writing

Organizing and simplifying information

Viewing important relationships

Viewing text as a sequence of relationships from one paragraph to the next

Constructing sentences and paragraphs

The authors provide definitions and examples of various types of semantic organizers
and illustrate the approach they would take in aiding students with reading and writing
disabilities in acquiring skills for organizing information. The authors project a
development sequence for introducing semantic organization for beginning readers and
nonreaders alike, including students with language disorders, as follows:

Realia clusters: Realia clusters use real things, such as household items and rope to
connect items and illustrate relationships between the items. For instance, to demonstrate
the idea of a family eating dinner, a teacher might use a pot, a dish, and a fork and then
use rope to connect the items. A telephone, the authors point out, would be an item used
to show something that does not belong in this category. This approach helps students to
place real items into categories. The authors contend that "to know what something
is, it is necessary to also understand what it is not."

Picture clusters: Picture clusters make use of pictures in organizing information. In
this stage, students would be asked to arrange items around a central picture. Then they
would connect items to the picture with pieces of rope. The authors use the same example
of a telephone being excluded from a group which includes a pot, a dish, and a fork, but
in this case, the cluster is made up of pictures, as opposed to real items.

Verb clusters: Verb cluster organizers use pictures to represent action verbs. Pictures
representing verbs such as walk, eat, swim, and jump are connected by lines to their
written counterparts. A picture of a boy jumping would be connected to the written word
"jump." Verb clusters are eventually used to help students construct sentences
with the verb as the central part of the sentence.

Noun clusters: In contrast to verb clusters, noun clusters emphasize the noun as the
central part of the sentence and move students towards using a noun as as the central
theme in organizing a paragraph.

Concept clusters: Concept cluster organizers help students decipher between less
meaningful and more meaningful words and ideas. The authors contend that words such as
"has" and "is," for example, would be omitted from the organizer,
since they are less important words in the overall scheme of the theme or idea. Concept
organizers are used to aid students in summarizing a piece of text; not only must students
decide which information is more important, but they must also organize that information
graphically to show that the most relevant information is near the center of the cluster.

Episodic organizers: And finally, episodic organizers are used to illustrate change
from one cluster to another. For example, students learn how to make connections between
paragraphs such as a problem in the first paragraph to its solution in another. Since
relationships between events in subsequent paragraphs are graphically depicted, students
with language disorders have an easier time comprehending, organizing, and writing
paragraphs.

Although this article does not mention technology, it includes many implications for
how technology-based semantic organizing tools are used to support reading and writing for
students with disabilities.

This
material was developed by the National Center to Improve Practice
(NCIP), located at Education Development Center, Inc. in Newton, Massachusetts.
NCIP was funded by the U.S. Department of Education, Office of Special Education Programs
from October 1, 1992 - September 30, 1998, Grant #H180N20013. Permission is granted
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by NCIP, EDC, or the U.S. Government. This site was last updated in September
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